BIOGRAPHY

George Trevor Davies by Dave Dooley:

Born in Sutton, where his father had a butcher`s shop - hence the nickname Porky - this powerful prop-forward, with good scrimmaging technique signed for Wigan Highfield in 1931. He followed them down south as London Highfield and scored the first-ever try at the White City Stadium. A spell at Liverpool Stanley was followed by a move to St.Helens in 1939, where he helped to develop local talent during the war years. In 1945, playing against Wigan at Knowsley Road, George received a sine die ban for allegedly striking the referee after being sent off. Alas, it was later revealed that a spectator threw the punch and he was duly cleared! Former Manchester United centre half Bill Foulkes clearly remembers George`s aggressive style when he was a regular on the terraces at Knowsley Road as a youngster!

His final match for the Club was against Featherstone Rovers on the 18th of January 1947 as part of a 11 points to 7 victory at Post Office Road. Like so many fine players his career was blighted by the outbreak of the Second World War.

Alex Service also gives some details of match reports from George`s first few matches at the Saints: I remember asking the former Manchester United centre half Bill Foulkes who was his favourite player when he used to watch his home town team, the Saints and he replied immediately: “Porky Davies”! Of course, Bill was certainly an un-compromising footballer who took no prisoners on the field and, therefore, his choice of hero could be explained. George Davies was exactly the same. He was given the nickname ‘Porky’ after the family’s pork butchers in Sutton and this tended to disguise the fact that he was a real strongman, who could effortlessly bend six inch nails! The Knowsley Road crowd used to portray him as a ‘pantomime villain’ at times, but he was a real stalwart. He was best summed up in the local press by ‘Secundus’ after the game at Castleford on 29th November 1941: “Davies, one of the best forwards in the Rugby League scored Saints’ try. I can imagine the ribald scoff at the genial ‘Porky’ but that won’t alter my opinion. He can run, he can sidestep as well as any other player in the pack; he can take a pass, he can give one, he doesn’t know what fear means, and he never falters, however fierce the going”. His debut was like a breath of fresh air to the local correspondent in the St. Helens Reporter, after a bit of a disaster at Huddersfield, when Saints lost 5-33. “St. Helens humbled at Huddersfield”, barked the headline. “Success of new prop forward”. Ah yes, bad news and good news.

The match report continued: “St. Helens’ backs got a greater share of the ball than did their opponents. This was due to the inclusion of the new prop forward, George Davies, signed on from Liverpool Stanley for a figure in the region of £300. He made an instantaneous and smashing success. Whatever else happened to the side, Davies triumphed over the opposition. Huddersfield had a new front row man out, Taylor from Newcastle, but the amazing thing was that St. Helens dominated the scrums nearly three to one. But St. Helens lost and the reason was that the back division couldn’t do anything with the ball when they had it”. There is a rider to this as well. Saints’ winger Alf Ellaby, who had re-joined the club after a spell at Wigan, announced his retirement shortly after. But this is about front-rowers and George made another big impression when he made his home debut at Knowsley Road in a 17-2 victory against Barrow. Recorder in the Reporter was full of praise: “The whole foundation of victory came from the ‘stone wall’ of the front row. I coined this phrase from a word or two with a St. Helens player, and it is likely to be, I think, as historic as the ‘Incomparable Alf’ I coined years ago. A front row that can beat Salford with the Welsh international hooker Day in it, after beating a front row with a Welsh rugby union honours hooker at Huddersfield, and then go on further to beat a burly front row with an English international hooker, McKeating, in it, is doing a real job of work. Share the glory between the three, for they are all part and parcel of the success, but save a special word for ‘Porky’ Davies, who like [Frank] Tracey, was making an impressive debut before the home spectators. These men got the ball for the backs, handsomely beating Barrow for it, and the backs being on their toes, there was never the slightest doubt of the ultimate victory”.

So it obvious that in the days when scrums were scrums and a vital means of keeping possession for your team, George was a real specialist. One interesting fact is that George and Frank Tracey`s transfer to St. Helens was paid for partly by the Saints` Supporters Club, an unusual occurrence at the time.

George missed just one match out of 31 during the 1939-40 campaign and was an ever-present, together with his hooker Jimmy Phillips in 1943-44. George continued to play on throughout the war years and his final appearance [his 184th] was at Featherstone, on 18th January 1947, where Saints ground out an 11-7 victory. Incidentally, Saints’ full-back that day was Duggie Greenall!

Jimmy Goodier played for Saints during the war years and can give first-hand accounts of the forwards he packed down with and, of course, George is no exception. “George worked down Sutton Manor pit and he was a really decent bloke when you got to know him”, he recalls. “Mind you, there were two sides of George – on and off the field. On it, he was what I would call a ‘quiet’ front-rower, in that he would never give me to many instructions as such in the scrum, only when he felt he really needed to. This was unusual, as he was an open sided prop. He didn’t go barking out orders on the pitch either. I suppose he was a quiet enforcer, really. He would sort anybody out if they were giving him or any of the other lads any bother. Occasionally, you would see somebody lying there on the pitch and the odds were that George had belted him! But like I said, he was a really nice bloke off the pitch”. [see Jimmy`s biography for more!]

As for George, he passed away at the age of 90 on 10th December 1998 and, as far as we know, is the only St. Helens player buried in the Highlands of Scotland, facing the Isle of Skye!